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Austrian Rightist Is Working on His Comeback

''The biggest problem with Jörg Haider,'' the populist right-winger whose party shares power in Austria, ''is that he has two words -- 'Ausländer raus!' ('Foreigners Out!'), but we need two hours to answer it,'' said Dieter Bogner, a museum designer and one of Vienna's great and good.

Mr. Haider has never actually used those words to insist that foreigners leave -- he is more concerned that more do not arrive. But he ''creates a very unpleasant atmosphere, and it takes a lot of time to fight it,'' Mr. Bogner said.

''He finds simple, short, understandable sentences to get his point across -- if he were talking about peace and brotherhood, he'd be great.''

But Mr. Haider is not talking about peace and brotherhood. With his support declining and national elections next year, Mr. Haider is pressing hot buttons on any issue that will reanimate disappointed voters and get him back into the news -- nuclear power, immigration, ethnic minorities and the dangers of European enlargement.

In the process, he has embarrassed his coalition partner, Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel of the conservative People's Party, infuriated three of Austria's neighbors -- the Germans, the Czechs and the Slovenes -- and sent another shiver through a Europe that wants to view the hard right as a passing fad.

With the help of the powerful tabloid newspaper, Neue Kronen-Zeitung, Mr. Haider succeeded in getting the signatures of 915,000 Austrians -- 15 percent of the electorate -- on a petition demanding that Austria veto Czech accession to the European Union unless Prague shut down its nuclear power plant at Temelin on the Czech-Austrian border.

Mr. Haider's position was carefully judged to appeal to the passionate antinuclear sentiment in Austria, a country that has long been wary of nuclear power plants.

Even though the petition can and will be ignored by parliament, it did succeed in embarrassing Mr. Schüssel, who just last November had negotiated a deal on Temelin with the Czechs. The whole furor has once more successfully stirred Austrian fears about letting neighbors like the Czechs and their cheap migrant labor into the European Union and Austria's protected labor market.

Despite Mr. Haider's knack for getting into the news, some Austrians, like Peter Ulram, a pollster and political scientist, see him as caught in a political dead end by age and circumstance.

Mr. Haider is 52, and his Freedom Party has been relatively responsible since it entered government in February 2000, when the move prompted angry protests at home and seven months of toothless European Union sanctions that were lifted when the party proved less xenophobic than foreigners had feared.

''He's a declining force in Austrian politics,'' Mr. Ulram said. ''He lives on unhappiness, and people are less disgruntled than before.''

That is certainly the hope of the political and economic elite, ashamed by the bad publicity that Mr. Haider brought to Austria, a former empire that lives on pastry and tourism.

But other analysts, like Anneliese Rohrer of the daily Die Presse, think that Mr. Haider is still a considerable force in Austrian politics, with ambitions to become chancellor next year. ''He's a bit psychotic, but clever,'' she said. ''Haider -- this is not finished. If he runs a real angst campaign, he can get the extra 7 percent or so of the votes that he needs.''

As a politician, ''Haider puts his finger on things that are wrong and exaggerates them,'' Ms. Rohrer said. ''Something in what he says is always true, maybe just half true, but true.''

If he fails to become chancellor, many believe, Mr. Haider is contemplating a European political career, leading a pan-European party intended to oppose the enlargement of the European Union to the east.

''Haider isn't a neo-Nazi but a post-Nazi,'' said Doron Rabinovici, a historian and a leader of the anti-Haider movement here. ''But he really is in a crisis. He's opposition and government at the same time, but only a crisis gives him his chance. Europe is shifting to the right, and he's not finished, not yet.''

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For now, Mr. Haider remains the governor of the state of Carinthia, kept out of a role in Vienna by the initial reaction to his party's participation in government. His party leader, Susanne Riess-Passer, declined to be interviewed for this article.

While Mr. Haider is said to be bored and angry with his provincial exile, he exercises significant power over the ministers he brought into politics, who would otherwise not have their current jobs.

Despite the angry criticism of Mr. Schüssel for forming a government with the Freedom Party, the chancellor is considered to have done a solid job, keeping the party in check. With the compromises of power, Mr. Haider's support has dropped from a high of 30 percent at the 1999 national elections to about 20 percent now.

Mr. Haider brought the party up from 3 percent when he took it over in 1986 to a level that secured it a place in the government. The Freedom Party was the only coalition partner that could enable Mr. Schüssel to become chancellor and end decades of ultimately stagnant rule by the Social Democrats, still Austria's largest party.

Appealing to those left behind by modernity and globalization, Mr. Haider took votes on the right and the traditional left, urging in particular a halt to immigration and appealing to older Austrians who, like his own parents, fought in the Nazi Wehrmacht or supported the Nazis.

''Now, after two years of government, you can see his voters drifting away,'' said Herbert Lackner, chief editor of Profil magazine. Tranquil times and necessary government reform, he said, have boosted Mr. Schüssel and his conservatives at Mr. Haider's expense. ''But in times of conflict, those numbers can get reversed and Haider can get his voters back, those discontented people whose lives got stuck somewhere and who know it's someone else's fault.''

So Mr. Haider is moving to remobilize his own voters while being careful not to break the coalition with Mr. Schüssel, his only possible national partner.

A recent court case illustrated Mr. Haider's method. A year ago, he disparaged the leader of Vienna's Jewish community, Ariel Muzicant, for faking anti-Semitic letters, implying corruption. He said it was strange that someone named Ariel, also a well-known brand of laundry soap, could be so dirty.

Mr. Muzicant's main sin was to oppose the involvement of Mr. Haider's party in the government. When Mr. Muzicant sued over the insult, Mr. Haider eventually had to apologize -- in writing. But his propaganda point had been made.

''It's about getting voters, not about any particular issue,'' said Ms. Rohrer.

Witness the fine furor Mr. Haider is stirring over the Czech decrees, long a sore point here, that legalized the expulsion of some three million ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland and led to confiscation of their property after World War II.

The issue was largely settled with Germany in 1997, but there are some 250,000 expellees and their relatives in Austria whose votes Mr. Haider is seeking. His argument is that if Austria is morally obligated to return property to relatives of Jews who were expelled and murdered, then the Czech Republic must do the same for its Germans.

Stirring a debate on the issue is relatively easy: Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman recently branded the Sudeten Germans traitors and Hitler's ''fifth column.'' This in turn angered German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who threatened to cancel a visit to Prague after his conservative rival in this year's elections, Edmund Stoiber, objected to Mr. Zeman's remarks. Mr. Schüssel then called on the Czechs to cancel the decrees -- something Prague will not do.

Mr. Haider thrives on such strife, which makes a greater Europe seem dangerous to Austrians, even though polls show more than 60 percent of Austrians favor enlargement of the European Union.

''Haider sees Europe as his playground,'' Mr. Lackner said.

Mr. Haider has openly toyed with the idea of moving on to the grander European political stage as head of a pan-European movement against integration.

Mr. Haider has watched the European Union accept the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and his rightist coalition partners, said Ms. Rohrer, and sees this acceptance, together with the failed European Union sanctions against him, as auguring well for his future.

Even those in Vienna who are confident that a dose of power has successfully kept Mr. Haider at bay, still betray significant ambivalence. On the one hand, a senior government official said, ''power inoculates against Haider.'' On the other hand, he said, ''Haider in power numbs everyone.''